AT&T Crippling BlackBerry for iPhone?

0xdeadbeef writes "BlackBerryCool got a tip that not only was AT&T removing GPS functionality from their version of the BlackBerry 8820, they're doing it so it won't show up the iPhone. While carriers crippling phones to stop them from competing with pay-per-use services is nothing new, this might be the first time they've done it to make their other products seem less diminished."

sigh...

[by Anonymous Coward]

The new AT&T feels alot like the old AT&T.

Re:sigh...

[DoraLives (622001)]

> The new AT&T feels alot like the old AT&T.

Trust me on this one ..... it's worse.

Re:sigh...

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

The new AT&T feels alot like the old AT&T.

I take your point, but there's something new in this type of behavior that we're seeing in all sorts of corporations. Instead of the traditional "free market" belief that "you give the customer what they want" and "supply and demand", there's a sense that we're the ones who are obliged to give the corporations what they want.

Let's face it, it's been some years now since consumers had anything like the power wielded by corporations. They pay the government and the government works for them. We, in turn, exist to give the corporations what they want, which is profits. Our desires don't enter into the equation.

The "free market", if it ever existed, is a deeply flawed concept. No matter how its done, the story always ends the same way. We are the consumables.

Q: What do you get when you cross Apple and AT&

[SimHacker (180785)]

A: AT&T

Yeah, I know: old joke. Used to be IBM instead of AT&T. But this story just proves it again! It's funny because it's true.

-Don

USA - rest of world

[spectrokid (660550)]

And in the mean time, in the rest of the world, crippled phones DON'T EXIST. Because the phone you use is independent from the carrier. Welcome to open standards (GSM).

Re:USA - rest of world

[smitty_one_each (243267)]

I've found you can find happiness in slavery.--Reznor

Re:USA - rest of world

[smitty_one_each (243267)]

Screw the furniture. Threaten not to use their products, and you've got their attention. Recall, there had been civilization prior to the advent of the cell phone...

Re:USA - rest of world

[Espectr0 (577637)]

It isn't pretty in all of the rest of the world either. In latin america, all phones are locked to the carrier that provides them. While they don't cripple the phones as much as verizon (my v3 came with all features enabled), we can't choose carriers. GSM doesn't mean that the phone is free from carrier lockdown.

Re:USA - rest of world

[Actually, I do RTFA (1058596)]

I live in America. I have an uncrippled phone, because I opted to buy my own. I could either buy an uncrippled phone, or let the telco subsidize my purchase, but they want to cripple the phone so I would end up paying more money in the long term. Ultimately, I decided that to replace my uncrippled phone with one crippled in ways I didn't care about, but that was superior in other ways.

Let's be clear, you can bitch about the loss of rights companies force on you. Just be prepared to pay full-price for those things. Alternatively, you can buy a phone where they cripple the bluetooth, just use USB to move things, and say, "Hey, bluetooth isn't worth $150 to me to buy an uncrippled version."

It's actually more freedom in the US.

Re:

[dunkelfalke (91624)]

there are four bands. gsm 900 and gsm 1800 are used in europe, gsm 850 and gsm 1900 are used in americas (because 900 mhz and 1800 mhz were already used in usa that time).

quad bands gsm cell phones work everywhere.

Re:

[Albanach (527650)]

No, GSM is not universally the same. There are at least 3 GSM bands (frequencies escape me). North America has one, Europe another, and (I think) the Middle East has the third.

The rest of the world uses 900 and 1800MHz for GSM. The US uses two different frequencies, 850 and 1900.

Most phones sold in the Europe are tri band or quad band these days, covering all the frequencies needed to roam internationally. I've happily been using various UK phones in the US since 2002, and roaming in Europe and Afr

Improved services attract consumers

[Technician (215283)]

Many carriers think they are a monopoly and don't want to have their low end rob the profit from the high end.

They are forgetting something. There is competition. They should strive to make all of their products and services more valuable to consumers.

Here is what we have so far..
1 An i-phone which is cool who's bill comes in a box shipped by UPS Oh and by the way is has a monopoly carrier.

2 A Blackberry. They are obtainable from several carriers, but AT&T cripples them worse than other carriers.

3 A Blackberry on another carrier.

4.. The rest of the market

If you avoid #1 due to the carrier issues and monster bills, you are now likely to avoid #2 for both the service and carrier reputation. Just what were they thinking? They don't hold a monopoly on Blackberries.

http://www.bbhub.com/2006/09/18/rating-the-major-b lackberry-carrier-retailers-who-gets-it-and/ [bbhub.com]

I'm not so sure why AT&T would want to do this

[intx13 (808988)]

I'm not so sure why AT&T would want to do this. Even though I wouldn't think that the iPhone and the Blackberry compete directly, at least prior to this decision AT&T sold one popular device with GPS functionality. Why they would change so that they now sell no devices (at the iPhone/Blackberry level) with GPS capabilities?

I could understand if Apple wanted this to happen... but how does this help AT&T? AT&T doesn't/shouldn't care if people are buying Blackberries over iPhones on the basis of GPS, so long as the Blackberry comes from AT&T. If they believed that GPS was the tipping point, those customers are now buying nothing from AT&T.

Doesn't seem so smart to me.

how retarted.

[Lumpy (12016)]

The GPS in every cellphone I have ever tried was incredibly crappy anyways. The Blackberry GPs's dont get a fix unless you carefully hold them up in the air in an open field, Nextel GPS phones also suck horribly. The iPhone dies not have a GPS for two very good reasons. 1. it's a metal casing phone. 2. GPS modules in phones simply do not work so they left it out. The cheapie Magellan Gold GPS I got for $89.00 on ebay kicks the crud out of every single GPS enabled phone I have ever seen. and yes I have seen lots of them. They can not get a GPS fix from inside your pocket or on your hip, they never work in newer cars as the glare film and other tratements make the windshield electrically conductive so it blocks RF signals.

I am sure they are disabling the GPS simply because the GPS sucks. The is the same company that 3 years ago refused to allow phones on it's network that did not have GPS's in them.

Not precisely...

[Junta (36770)]

You are correct in that it isn't a pure GPS situation in most all phones, but it doesn't mean it isn't interacting with GPS satellite signals, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS [wikipedia.org]. GPS takes more time and is more picky about quality signal from satellites. aGPS still has some degree of satellite signal being received at the phone, but either sends that data to the tower which uses it's more optimal GPS situation to provide a lock, or receives the extra data from the tower. In other words, it isn't necessarily any less precise, just potentially dependent on communication with a tower and less time needed from the point of being turned on to being able to pinpoint the location.

Is this in any way surprising?

[owlnation (858981)]

I have to say that this seems normal behavior for any phone company the world over. I've never had the full features of any phone I've ever owned from many carriers in several countries.

It's what phone companies do. It's usually a question of finding the provider that sucks the least.

Although, in this case it seems a little back-to-front. I would guess that there may be users who end up with a Blackberry because they can't afford one, or their company prefers that system. I would seriously doubt there are many (non-corporation based) users who actually prefer a Blackberry now. Cost aside.

And, can I ask that maybe it's time to have a moratorium on iPhone stories. Yes, I think it's cool too -- but I am sick and tired reading of about it. The Firehose if clogged with iPhone stories. I want to read about something else now. Thanks.

Re:Is this in any way surprising?

[Oldsmobile (930596)]

This is infact not normal behaviour, I don't know where you got this from. In countries with functioning mobile phone markets (that would be almost everywhere else except the US) the customers will quickly abandon any company cripling their phones for another one.

Sure, that's exactly it. Yeah.

[jht (5006)]

As long as carriers dictate what phones do or don't do, this is no big deal - it's just typical. I suspect the GPS functionality lockdown has nothing to do with iPhone, it's probably just that AT&T wants to sell their Telenav service and make money from it. The iPhone really doesn't compete in the same segment as Blackberries of any stripe, and they sell at a non-subsidized price - GPS or the lack thereof isn't going to make a hell of a lot of difference in the Blackberry/iPhone purchase decision.

It's not like this is rare. Heck, Verizon's locked down the OBEX capabilities on most of their Bluetooth phones so they can sell their wireless sync service. Even Apple had to bite the bullet here - since there's no subsidy on the phone and Apple pockets all the money, don't you think they'd love to sell unlocked iPhones that would work on every GSM carrier? Or sell CDMA models through Verizon or Sprint? Of course they would. But to get AT&T to sell 'em and modify the network (build out EDGE capacity and add the Visual Voicemail system) they had to agree to a multi-year exclusivity deal.

So basically, the 8820 being modified because of Apple? I call BS. And if you want your Blackberry and you want it on AT&T, find yourself an unlocked version and just DIY. It's GSM, you can do that. It'll be unsubsidized, but at least that way it'll be a fair fight with the iPhone.

Wait - even though iPhone is unsubsidized it's still locked. Never mind!

Verizon too!

[dimer0 (461593)]

Comon, this isn't just AT&T. My *Verizon* 8830 phone has been "crippled" for about 2 weeks before the iPhone came out.

I called Verizon and inquired why my phone doesn't have the GPS turned on, and after getting to some 'data expert', I was told that the reason is Blackberry won't turn over some API or something to allow Verizon to enable this.

Now, I doubt that's really the reason, but again - this isn't some AT&T and/or Apple stunt.

Summary is Wrong - RTFA

[HumanEmulator (1062440)]

The summary makes it sound like GPS is being removed from the phone, but the article says in first paragraph "...the US carrier has been successful in their attempts to lockdown the GPS functionality in their upcoming BlackBerry 8820 so that the only functioning 3rd party software will be TeleNav."

Not the same thing. "Only functioning 3rd party software", means you should be able to use TeleNav and any 1st party software (ie. whatever RIM has.)

Note: TMobile.com doesn't advertise (or even list as a feature) the GPS functionality on the BlackBerry 8800 that it is selling.

Of course there's no doubt this unbiased reporting from "BLACKBERRYCOOL" written by someone who admits to interviewing people while drunk (http://www.blackberrycool.com/2007/05/09/004387/) is totally accurate.

Re:Wow

[ushering05401 (1086795)]

Someone may be jumping the gun here. Wouldn't an AT&T/Telenav deal make more sense than an Apple/AT&T deal here?

I am going to hold off before taking a blogger's word that this move is iPhone related in the least. Telenav is now the exclusive 3rd party GPS app for the AT&T offering... follow the money.

Regards.

Re:Wow

[godawful (84526)]

I thought it was AT&T hindering the device not apple, so why do they need to be less paranoid?

Actually this all seems silly to me. Silly if true, I should say. I bought an iphone because I liked it, some other phone having gps isn't going to make me like it less.

Posted from my iPhone

Re:Wow

[Mattintosh (758112)]

AT&T is upset because the vast majority of people don't want a crippled iPhone. They did costly upgrades to their network in order to lock people into crippled iPhone service in the US, and they honestly thought people would buy a crippled phone with overpriced, crippled service. Now that most of the hype has died down, and it's become clear that most people aren't as stupid as everyone likes to assume they are, they're attempting to make more demand for the iPhone by crippling everyone else's phones too.

There. Fixed that for you.

Re:iPhone is old tech

[OECD (639690)]

But this is old tech in fancy wrapping.

Don't fret, I'm sure it suffer the same fate that befell the iPod.

Re:Has Anyone Even Seen An iPhone?

[bwen (675669)]

I own one, my brother owns one, my mother has one, my father has one. My boss has one, my 2 best friends each have one. You can't go outside without seeing people using them. Its hardly a marketplace flop; initial sales projections were off, and they are selling quite nicely.